November 6th, 2008 Sarah Posted in Family, Home, Soap nuts No Comments »
EcoKnits is run by a friend of mine and we’ve been talking soap nuts for wool washing.
Proper wool is tricky to wash safely without felting, shrinking or matting it nastily and ruining that perfect, soft and squishy scarf/hat/whatever you made for your best friend for Christmas.
October 29th, 2008 Sarah Posted in Environment, Family, Home 3 Comments »
I reuse carrier bags as kitchen bin liners because I do fling some yucky stuff in there and to be honest it does make life easier. But the more I reduce my rubbish the less bin liners I need, and the more I’m thinking about what is going in my bin.
September 12th, 2008 Sarah Posted in Environment, Home 3 Comments »
ROUTES AND FINAL DESTINATIONS OF ALL MATERIALS COLLECTED IN CHESTERFIELD FOR RECYCLING
A comprehensive breakdown…
September 9th, 2008 Sarah Posted in Environment, Home 2 Comments »
What do they do with that carefully sorted recycling we put out for collection every other week? What happens to the plastic I clean and bag up to take with me when I go out near one of those Bring Sites?
August 25th, 2008 Sarah Posted in Environment, Family, Garden, Home, Soap nuts No Comments »
Ethics Trading’s best seller continues to be the wonderful Soap Nut.
Essentially you can do ALL your cleaning using soap nuts. Yes, ALL. It’s perfectly possible to clean your home, your laundry, car, curtains, children, floors, windows, patio, garden furniture, well everything really. If it gets cleaned with some sort of wet detergent, or detergent and water then soap nuts can do it.
If you need a Soap Nut Solution then the instructions for making one can be found as part of the Soap Nut Information PDF file.
They’re also good in the garden, not only for cleaning your patio and garden furniture, but as an insect repellent. Plants sprayed with a mild soap nut solution have much less green and black fly and don’t get seem to be eaten as badly by slugs and snails. In fact, soap nut solution appears to kills slugs and snails while it drives away the greenfly.
Oh and a mild soap nut solution in a spray bottle works well for damping down wall paper for stripping if you’d normally use soapy water - I’ve just done my bathroom.
How much more versatile can you get?
Soap nuts, the Ultimate in renewable resources, versatile and contributing to the carbon cycle too!
July 21st, 2008 admin Posted in Environment, Fair Trade, Home, Uncategorized 3 Comments »
The complementary flip side of trading ethically has to be consuming ethically doesn’t it? This week I’ve taken a leaf out of the Myzerowaste family. They’re going for a target of throwing NOTHING away. Yes, nothing.
July 18th, 2008 admin Posted in Environment, Family, Garden, Home, Uncategorized No Comments »
Those of you that know me from various places as well as in real life will know that I just love my garden. So it was only natural that I took Ethics Trading into the garden too.
June 15th, 2008 admin Posted in Environment, Family, Garden, Home, Soap nuts 2 Comments »
Pour approx 1 litre of water into a cooking pot; add about 50g cracked soap nut shells; cover and boil, then simmer for approximately 10 minutes. The boiling process extracts the saponin from the nut shells and combines with the water. Let the infusion cool and you can use it immediately, or let it steep overnight. The soap nut infusion is theoretically suitable for every kind of cleaning - even wash your car with it!
June 12th, 2008 admin Posted in Business News, Environment, Family, Home No Comments »
It says it is on the box of laundry bleach I have in stock here, the vegan society mark is there, but this article in the Daily Mail from August 2007 casts some doubt on that.
the Vegan Society is to refuse permission for its trademark to be used when the endorsement comes up for renewal later this month.
The move follows a tip-off that Ecover uses the water fleas - between 0.2mm and 5mm long - to test the effects of detergents on aquatic life.
According to Ecover, the microscopic crustacean - scientific name Daphnia - found in rivers, streams, lakes and ponds, isn’t actually an animal.
Certainly it’s not covered by EU animal-testing rules which are limited to vertebrates past a specified embryonic stage.
But the Vegan Society members consider water fleas - named for their jumping style of swimming - as “part of the animal kingdom”.
But that was August 2007 and the Vegan mark is still on the bleach I have here. So, I offer you the information, I will remove the “suitable for Vegan’s” from the Ecover bleach page here and then I leave the choice up to you. I will continue to use Ecover products in my home but I’m not Vegan. I do still firmly believe that Ecover are the best partner for soap nuts and the best in the Ethical business world. Their standards are higher than most. I do, however, appreciate the Vegan Society’s position too. Ethics Trading will continue to stock Ecover products for the foreseeable future.
June 7th, 2008 admin Posted in Environment, Family, Home, Soap nuts No Comments »
Imagine you could get away with using no chemicals in your Laundry. Now imagine there is a single product that would help you with all the cleaning in your house – with no chemicals. Now take the leap and imagine the product I am describing is natural and grows on trees, Sapindus mukorossi, the soap berry tree. Soapnuts are also known as Soap berries or soap pods in various places online and around the world.
Soap Nuts are actually not nuts, they are a shelled seed or berry - it’s the shells that we use. They grow wild in Nepal and India and are a natural source of high quality Saponin.
The wrinkly brown part is the berry or shell, and is also known as the soap nut, or soap berry. That is the part that is dried and is packed full of natural saponin for you to use round your home. You shouldn’t find any of the round black seeds in your delivery of soap nuts because I believe that if you pay for a cleaning product then you should get that product with nothing else taking up the weight of your purchase. They have no saponin and are useless for cleaning, but great if you want to grow a Soap Berry tree. The seeds are useless unless you want to grow a soap berry tree, although they do have uses other than cleaning, but they contain no saponin.
To use them you take about half a dozen soapnut shells and chuck them in a draw string cotton bag. Bung the bag in the washing machine drum with your dirty washing and set it going. They are odourless so if you want fragrant washing then add a few drops of an essential oil of your choice to the bag.
Soap Nuts contain no bleaching agents and no optical brighteners - so if you like your whites dazzlingly white you might want to add a box of Ecover Laundry Bleach to your basket!
If you need or want to know more then please do ask a question in the comments and it’ll be answered as honestly as possible.
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